1) There is plenty of evidence to suggest that people find it easier to navigate and remember from the printed page. 2) Yes we should all seek to learn about o

1) There is plenty of evidence to suggest that people find it easier to navigate and remember from the printed page. 2) Yes we should all seek to learn about other cultures and expand our horizons. But that hardly makes all of Western thought 'small' and 'provincial'. You are simply aping the view you are complaining about, only in the diametrically opposite direction. Seriously learning about how the great minds of the past understood their world is, often, just as good a way of expanding our horizons, as reading from other cultures in the present. We are stretched by space and time. Finally, I don't think you're taking seriously the limits that language places on our breadth of reading. Very few professional intellectual historians - let alone everyone else - know enough of the European languages to engage with anything but a small part of 'Western' thought. I agree that we should strive to read more in non-Western languages, but it's very tough going.